I just finished Captain Horatio Hornblower: Beat to Quarters… and it was really good! I bought three original 1937 editions for under five dollars, and they don’t go for much more online. These should have had a slip-case, but I’ll take them anyway. I’ve been wanting the Easton Press editions of all eleven books, but as you can see from the screen shot below, they aren’t cheap!

There is something nice about reading a good old book from 1937, and these were in great shape although I wouldn’t subject them to much abuse. This series is reprinted mostly in paperback, so I don’t think I’m going to read the entire run until I get the Easton Press set. Until then, I have these three, and a volume that has three other books in one volume, so I have six to read in the meantime. Along with all of the other books I have going.

These volumes remind me of the original Hardy Boys books I read in second and third grade, which were published in 1927, because of the similar word count on each page, the size of the books, and the depths of the stories. The original Hardy Boys, before they were heavily edited/rewritten entirely and republished in the classic blue hardback covers, were stories with more depth and real adventure that they share with these Hornblower books.

The Hornblower mini-series from about twenty years ago is fantastic, as well, and that is what got me into these books, besides my interest in sailing battleships that goes back to kindergarten and through high school. I drew a LOT of them at school for more than a decade. Nothing better than ships with three decks of guns blowing each other up! As long as I’m not there, of course.

There is this terrible, awful Gina Davis / Renny Harlin movie called Cutthroat Island, of which the only redeeming thing it offers is a great ship battle at the end. Neat stuff.